The Ultimate Paradox: Depression in Sobriety

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“Trapped.”

Depression is not an intellectual process, or I would have worked through it, resolved it and understood it. I am not sure that it is even a purely emotional process, nor do I know if it is mixture of an emotional and intellectual process.

Many of my friends believe that we can act “spiritually.” I don’t believe that we can. God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought.[iii] I am limited here in this venue as I am limited in life to that which is intellectual. I have emotions, I am emotive, but my actions come out of the thought, whether those thoughts come out of the thoughts that surround that place of deep seated emotional conflicts or not is another story.

Back to the metaphor of “Trapped.”[ii] One of the verses of the song goes like this;

“Now it seems like I’ve been sleepin’ in your bed too long,
And it seems like you’ve been meanin’ to do me harm,
But I’ll teach my eyes to see beyond these walls in front of me,
And someday I’ll walk out of here again,
Yeah I know someday I’ll walk out of here again.”[iv]

“I’ve been sleeping in your bed too long,” is about when the depression rules my life. It is as if I am in a bed, in my mind, and I cant get out. I don’t believe that my depression is some sort of nebulous, undecipherable, unattainable, mystical concept. There is a basis for my depression. It is just unexplainable in any sort of linear, rational way. Please remember the idea of “ If dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.”

“I’ll teach my eyes to see beyond these walls in front of me,” I relate that to the process of uncovering, discovering, working through and then hopefully discarding to the level that they don’t govern my conscious life, those deep seated emotional conflicts that persist below the level of my consciousness. They are the walls that are in front of me. Those are the rules I live by, whether I know it or not.

But that is why I write this blog. I am looking to break those rules. “There aint no rules around here, we’re trying to accomplish something.”[iii]

An example of that. I had a dialogue with a friend of mine last night. In one of my e-mails I was rather presumptuous of what I thought my friend was thinking. I made a mistake. So my friend got angry at me and their response back to me stated that . It just so happens that this friend is a female.

So my normal way of acting based on my mistake is to quickly and effusively apologize ad nauseum. I would try to stop her from being angry at me. I watched myself start to go through the process inside of myself of doing that. That deep seated emotional conflict of, “please don’t get mad at me because you are going to hit me if you do,” rule popped its head up. So I did the only thing I know to do now when those kind of situations come up; I breathed. The energy of the fear slowly dissipated. I didn’t do anything, I waited for her response.

The most important part of those lyrics is the line that I hold onto for hope. “Someday I’ll walk out of here again.” What that says to me and what I hold to be true is that I will go back to a place, “again,” inside of me where there was no deep seated emotional conflicts that persisted below the level of my consciousness, which created violent twists to my behavior and altered my life for the worst. That is why I am writing this. To expose those rules of the dead for me.

[i] If you continue to read this blog, you will see that Bruce Springsteen is my favorite musical artist. [ii]If I want to change my world, I have to change the metaphor. Joseph Campbell[iii] Thomas Edison. [iv] Jimmy Cliff wrote “Trapped.” I first heard it when Bruce did it, but Jimmy Cliff wrote it.

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One thought on ““Trapped.””

Hi Jim – I do think that it is wonderful that you are writing and using the act of writing to help yourself to get back to a place of peace and health and well-being. Keep your heart open to all the positive things around you and keep on writing. 🙂